24 BULLETIN UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 



APPENDIX. 



WasJiitigton, March 12, 1877. 



Dear Sir : * * * In the preface to the " Dakota Grammar 

 and Dictionary ", published, under the ^auspices of the Minnesota His- 

 torical Society, by the Smithsonian Institution, a notice of all the bands 

 of the Teton Sioux is concluded thus : — 



" And the Oglala and Hunkpapa, the meanings of which names have 

 not been ascertained.'' 



By which we are to understand only that the missionaries, all adepts 

 in the Dakota language by an over twenty years' residence in the ISTa- 

 tion, had not been able to agree among themselves as to their precise 

 meanings, some holding one theory and some another. 



To speak, first, of the last-named Sioux band (which appears in the 

 official reports of the Indian Office travestied into " Oncpapa"), the spell- 

 ing of the missionaries, as to the preliminary " H " forming an integral 

 part of the name, has the prima facie prestige of probable correctness. 

 The traders and the " unlearned ", however, more commonly, in writing 

 the name, droj) the " H;', and the irinterpretations of it have been vari- 

 ous, as " Dried-Beef-Baters ", because " papii " by itself means dried or 

 parched meat, the prefix " un " being the sign of causation or use ; also, 

 as " Those- who-make-Dried-Beef " ; while still others interpret "Unk- 

 papa" as meaning the Noisy or Wild Band, from " un ", causation, and 

 pa^pa" (the a vowels being both nasal), this last word meaning to " yell ", 

 or " make a noise by shoating". If we adopt the missionary '' Hunkpapa '' 

 as being the true form of the name, a solution of the derivation is more 

 difficult, though it may mean, in that case also, somewhat the same as 

 already explained in t'le last solution of the first form of the name, 

 that is, the Tellers or Shoutersj perhaps from JioonJcah, having the sense 

 of brother or brethren, and the beforementioned pa^pa"^, to yell. 



There is another translation of Unkpapa or Oonkpahpah, a vulgar 

 one, having allusion to noisy defecation, and another of Hunkpapa or 

 Homkpahpah, which refers its derivation to their manner of dressing 

 buffalo-robes. 



I incline, without being decided about it, to Unkpapa or Oonkpahpah 

 as the true form of the name, and " Those who shout" as the better inter- 

 pretation; that is, "The Yellers" or ¥/ild Band, a name which perfectly 

 describes them, as they are even now the wildest Tetons of Sitting Ball's 

 wild forces. 



The O-gla-la, as the missionaries write it, the O-gay-lah-lah, in Eng- 

 lish notation, or Ogalalla in the common style of spelling the name, is 

 the designation of another sub-band of the Teton tribe of the great Da- 

 kota-Sioux Nation, One of the most distinguished of the authors of the 

 Dakota Lexicon, the Rev. Gideon J. Pond, has expressed in writing the 



